Bio

I currently teach at the University of Illinois at Chicago as Lecturer of Italian, in the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies.

I hold a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I also hold a Master’s and a Bachelor's degree in English and Spanish Literature, both received in Italy. My current research interests include pandemic studies in world literature, 20th-century Italian literature with a focus on environmental literature and cinema, Italo Calvino and the fantastic mode.

I was born and raised in Italy but spent several years studying abroad. I studied at the University of Seville, at Sierra Nevada College, and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I taught the Italian and Spanish languages in Minnesota, in Wisconsin, and in Tennessee, for a total of over 8 years. 

Selected Grants

Center for Teaching, Sewanee, The University of the South, Teaching Enrichment Grant, 2021/2022

Selected Publications 

Articles

• “Regrowth and Rebirth in Alice Rohrwacher’s Cinema”. In Italian Quarterly, Spring 2025

• "Italo Calvino, un visionario ambientalista". Author profile for the AATI Newsletter Fall 2023

• "The Secrets of Calvino’s Ars Combinatoria". In Italica, v. 99, no. I, Spring 2022

Book reviews

• Patrizia Grimaldi Pizzorno. Dopo la peste. Desiderio e Ragione nella Decima Giornata del Decameron. Firenze: Olschki, 2021. Pp. 126. In Annali d’Italianistica, v. 41, 2023

• Paolo Traniello. Le opere e i libri. Foscolo, Leopardi, Manzoni alle soglie dell’editoria moderna. Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2021. Pp. 191. In Annali d’Italianistica, v. 41, 2023

• Antonio Mileo. L’eroe fuori gioco. La struttura dello spazio nella Gerusalemme Liberata. Napoli: Paolo Loffredo Editore, 2020. Pp. 277. ISBN: 9788832193442. In Quaderni d’Italianistica, v. 43, no. 1, 2022

• Giuliana Adamo. Désordre. Futurismi di ieri e di oggi. Roma: Armando Editore, 2021. Pp. 159. In Annali d’Italianistica, v. 40

• Elio Attilio Baldi. The Author in Criticism: Italo Calvino’s Authorial Image in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. Pp. 306. In Annali d’Italianistica, v. 38, 2020 (Spring 2020)

Notable Honors

• 2020/2021, Leadership Award recipient, Graduate Association of French and Italian Students, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• 2019-2020, Instructor of Honor Award recipient, University Housing, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Education

PhD from University of Wisconsin-Madison

Selected Presentations

• NeMLA 2024 – Boston, MA - Integrating Sustainability into the L2 classroom (March 2024)

• NeMLA 2023 – Buffalo, NY - The Resilience of Nature amid Environmental Destruction in Alice Rohrwacher’s Cinema (March 2023)

• NeMLA 2022 – Baltimore, MD - The False Authenticity of Books in Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (March 2022)

• SIS PG Colloquium Really Fantastic 2022 – Virtual Symposium - Moderator of panel The Fantastic and Italo Calvino (February 2022)

• NeMLA 2021 – Virtual Conference - Calvino’s Machines: a Key to Anti-anthropocentrism (March 2021)

Selected Guest Lectures

• "Italo Calvino: a Visionary Environmentalist". University of Illinois at Chicago, October 25, 2023

• "Italo Calvino: un Ambientalista Visionario". Ridgewood High School, November 2, 2023